Black Opal and Scarlet
by Frozen In Flight
Summary: At the end of the war, humans shattered Duke's faith in his own kind.   A take on the death of the great Entelexeia and what set Duke on his path. Two-shot. Probably. I might add more eventually, if I get a good idea.
1. Path Chosen

I feel horribly cruel for writting and posting this, as I've taken to roleplaying as Duke...  
But the plot wouldn't leave me alone.

Don't read this while listening to Nylen. Just don't.

* * *

"I know you do not care for the taste, but I have bought some Lemon-" Duke looked up then, and managed not to drop the pack of food and healing gels. Elucifer was where he had left him, but the dozen odd humans were new. They had all frozen at the sight of him, but he could see their weapons, the red that stained Elucifer further and shone on them. The great Entelexeia lay still.

"I thought you said Pantarei wouldn't be here!" One of the bloodied humans demanded from another. That snapped him from his shock. His blade was too far away. Fine.

"Elucifer!" His sight flickered over with the same color as his eyes and his soreness and exhaustion from the battle, flight, and tending his friend's wounds, vanished. "_Holy Rain_!" The rain his spell summoned glowed brightly, and the humans cried out. They turned from Elucifer to him, their blades running with the holy-charged waters and cleaned slowly of his friend's blood. "_Guilty Resolver!_" A flick of his hand enveloped half of them in violent light, startling the other ones into stumbling. "_Flame dragon!_" the ground was lit up by a light he couldn't see, and the flame spell ripped through most of them, the magic carrying one up in its jaws. The last man looked panicked, and turned to try to stab into Elucifer. "_Stop Flow!_" A quick hit knocked the man down, the blade away and Duke bound his mouth and hands with the man's clothes, turning quickly to Elucifer. The adrenaline, or whatever it was, was fading.

"Elucifer!" Duke knelt by his friends head, dwarfed by the Entelexeia's size. One black-opal like eye opened weakly to blink at him, the normally bright, fiery colors dull. "Hold on! _Healing Circle!_" The lights formed and sank into his friend. Elucifer gave a great heavy sigh. It did nothing that he could tell; the great many wounds continued bleeding.

"T-turn into a Kritya!" Duke told his friend, removing his coat and pressing it against one of the larger slashes, leaning against it with his shoulder. "My Artes work better that way!"

"Duke..." Elucifer sighed, remaining as he was.

"_Healing Circle_!" Duke cast again. "Please, Elucifer! I can help you if you shift! I-I can't right now!" How that hurt inside as he applied more pressure to the wound, ignoring a half a dozen other visible wounds further along his friend's long body. "_Healing Circle!_" His coat was soaking through, staining his pale hair and skin red.

"Duke..." Elucifer rumbled, shifting.

"I can stop the bleeding – carry you to an Aer krene. _Healing Circle!_ Please! I could-" Duke stopped talking as one of Elucifer's wings rested on his head.

"You're not listening." Elucifer told him, lifting his wing and half folding it against his side. "I cannot heal from this." Duke stared at him.

"You can!" Duke insisted. "You just need an Aer Krene, right? The-

"-Duke.-"

"re's one, not too far from here." Duke looked up at the sky, trying to remember where it had been. "I can carry-"

"-Duke. I am a dead Entelexeia." The albino swordsman froze at Elucifer's words, turning red eyes to his friend. "It is only a matter of time." Elucifer had turned his head, put his jaw on the ground and watched him with one dull eye.

"No!" But the fact that he was steadily staining more and more red from a wound he had tried to heal over and over again gave truth to the Entelexeia's words. "No! _Healing Circle! Healing Circle! Healing Circle!_" Duke struggled to keep casting the arte as his throat closed and the Aer he could call on dwindled. One of Elucifer's smaller claws grasped his hands, which he had pressed against the Entelexeia in effort to somehow, _somehow_ get the healing from his Artes into his friend's body, and tugged him closer to his friend's face.

"Duke, nothing can be done." The hand shifted its grasp so that it held him about the shoulders and Duke sank against the side of his friend's face. He tried to swallow the burning that rose in his throat and pressed his face against the side of Elucifer's.

"I-is this how they repay you?" Duke demanded. "You practically won the war for the humans, and then they kill you!"

"Duke... Do not be consumed by anger to the whole of humanity..."

"Why shouldn't I? You save them, and they thank you by assaulting – _murdering_ you!" Duke didn't quite shout, his throat was closing up too much for that, but his voice did rise. "We were _allied_ with the Empire!" The men on the ground could have come from nowhere else.

"Duke." The small claw pushed his face toward the dulling eye. "Remember. Protect this world, our Terca Lumireis. Peace, for _all_ living things." Elucifer's dull opal eye got some of its fire back, fragments of orange and violet catching the light. "Not just those monsters you manage to speak to, the Kritya and the Entelexeia. All living things."

"Y-yes." Duke felt tears now, and didn't bother stopping them now. The light to Elucifer's eyes dwindled.

"Promise me? To do your best?" It was strange to hear such a soft voice from such a large being.

"Yes." He promised. Elucifer sighed, closed his eye. "I promise, Elucifer." The Entelexeia leader didn't reply. "... Elucifer?" Duke pushed himself off his friends face, and the claw that had rested on his shoulder slid off.

Limp.

He whirled, eyes widening, to stare down his friends side.

The bleeding had stopped. A step back, and Elucifer's form shone slightly, then flashed bright.

When he opened his eyes again, all there was left of his friend was stained ground, shorn off feathers and scales, his soaked coat, and a crystal.

"Elucifer..." It came out choked, and a half step brought him over to the Apatheia. Elucifer had explained this, hadn't he? It was a mass of Aer.

It was all that was left but for memories.

Duke stared at the crystal, which lay serenely on the stained ground, glowing inside.

Humans had done this.

* * *

The man on the ground had been slowly inching away once the _Stop Flow _had worn off, watching, unable to make a noise as the war hero tried to heal his friend. Truth be told, he didn't want to make any noise. When the albino swordsman turned, his long white hair stained the same color as his eyes by his friend's blood, red smears on the side of his face and staining his red uniform-like clothes darker, he tried to move further away when those red eyes fixed on him. The man bent while slowly walking towards him, a blood gummed hand picking a blade from the ground – not his.

"...You... are going to tell me who ordered this." The last Pantarei's low voice was cold, deader than the Entelexeia behind him. "Whether you like it or not."

* * *

*hums.* Yes. Angry Duke is Angry. Elucifer ended up seeming a lot like Nylen. Not sure if that's a good thing or not... but...

I personally think that Duke had a little bit of trouble with emotions BEFORE Elucifer died, and after, he shut all of them away. It's not healthy of him, but...


	2. Path Started

Really short chapter, but this is all I really had in mind for this. If I decide I need to make a mid game and a post game little short, I might continue it.. but for now, this is it.

* * *

Khroma landed before the Aer Krene. The spring hadn't been overly active, nor even disturbed, but something felt... off to her senses. An abnormality. An abnormality that felt like a human.

What human would willingly stay within an Aer Krene?

One. One human, friend of a great Entelexeia.

"Duke?" Khroma stayed still and heard the shift. She walked carefully, letting her talons click upon the ground as she curved a half circle so she could see behind the rock, allowing whatever it was behind more time to see her. Risky, but if it was Duke, she did not wish to startle him. "It is I, Khroma."

It was Duke. But the pale man wasn't as well kept as he had been when Khroma last saw him. He was dirty, his silvery hair unwashed, dull and stained with... blood.

"Duke, are you injured?" Bright scarlet eyes focused further upon her rather than the blank watching that had been before, then flicked to the side to watch the visible Aer.

"I am not wounded." The man's deep voice was dead, flat. Apathetic. Hoarse. His pale face was as grimy as the rest of him but for twin clean streaks from bloodshot eyes. Khroma decided to take a chance, and assumed her Krityan form. His bland, horribly still attention went back to her, then out to the Aer.

"Duke... What happened." She stopped out of reach – the swordsman would have to lean forward to be able to touch her outstretched hand with his should she present one. His bright eyes returned to her.

"The Empire took something dear to me." Duke stated, and his eyes returned to watching the Aer. "I returned the favor." For such a simple sentence, his voice held surprising darkness. Khroma remained silent as she thought. All of the Entelexeia knew of Elucifer's fall, and Elucifer had been a sort of 'king', to use the human term, of one faction of Entelexeia. The remaining faction.

Before she had left Zaphias to look at Aer Krene, the Emperor was announced dead.

"Duke, did you slay the emperor?" What she had heard, what had been announced to the population was that the Emperor's illness had claimed his life, but Khroma had heard of assassinations and poisonings that had been announced to human populations as such. It kept fear down, as she understood.

"I have slain no leaders." Duke states. A moment, and he adds. "I did sow confusion in the event succession is needed."

"Duke, what did you do?" Khroma asked, sinking to eye level with the sitting man. Duke looked at her, and raised his right hand from where it hung half curled at the left side of his drawn up legs, palm down. Khroma blinked as the albino swordsman slowly raised the hand, palm down, then blinked again as a blade floated to follow. It was curved, broad at the tip then slimming down toward the middle, a blade made of edge and little else. It was made of some sort of reddish metal, and floated half a foot from Duke's empty hand.

"That is... Dein Nomos.." Khroma watched the blade slowly turn under Duke's palm. "Duke, you stole an imperial treasure...?" Duke moved his hand slowly over to its side, and the blade moved with him, floating.

"The Imperial family had little use for it; it was merely a mark of status." Duke stated. "I ... have a use for it." The albino let the blade rest on the ground and wrapped his arm about his drawn up knees again.

"What can the sword do?" The Entelexeia may have been far older than the human, but there were some things nobility kept from curious Kritya. Duke tilted his head a little, regarding the blade on the ground beside him, then her without changing the tilt of his head.

"It holds the Rizomata Formula." Duke stated, looking back at the blade. "With it, it is possible for one to calm, control, and disperse Aer." His red eyes found Khroma again. "I can calm Aer Krene as well as any Entelexeia, with this." Disperse Aer... And there was no Apatheia around, either.

"Is that what you did with Elucifer's Apatheia?" Khroma asked. Duke didn't reply, staring off at the pool of Aer again, a slight shudder running through his frame. His eyes closed. "No matter." Khroma moved forward, grasping Duke's arms, and ignored the twitch, the bright red eyes that fixed upon her. "You need to bathe." She got him to his feet, grimacing inwardly at the dirt that fell from his hair. "You're going to disgrace the Entelexeia if you look as you do while calming Aer Krene." For a second she worried, the swordsman seemed to crumple as soon as she let him go, but it was only to pick up Dein Nomos.

"Very well..." He still looked far too lost, far too dead. She resolved to keep an eye on him as best she could.

"This way."

* * *

The way Khroma said "Duke didn't listen to you, did he? He is trying to protect the world in his own way." rang to me like... he was a child she was watching, who had started to walk where she couldn't or something. Like an awkward mother figure.

I dunno. Just something that I thought about.

Yes, I tried to leave things vague on purpose.


	3. Path Walking

Still very short peices. Not the last, this is.

* * *

He stood on the rock ring about the massive Blastia, watching lights flicker underneath the great Apatheia, at the top of the ring-like structure. From what he could tell from reading the Aer-flow, from down here...

They were fighting.

And winning.

Perhaps it had been a good choice to step back and allow 'Brave Vesperia' to right their mistake...

Duke turned to return to Ilyccia.

"No..." The flow of the Aer...!

He turned, and stared as the Apatheia glowed and released a beam of light, a beam of Aer, into the sky.

"They failed..." As he watched, the sky seemed to shatter, revealing what it had held back. His jaw tightened at the sight of the calamity, and his eyes flicked back to the Blastia as the large Apatheia fell. "I should have taken the task up myself..." A dark... figure fell from the top, with a glow that winked out in hand.

They had failed him.

_Dein Nomos would sink._

That second decided him.

Lowell's weight, even estimated, would not cause him to dip too much. Duke strode out onto the open air.

Time to put this into practice.

* * *

He quickly discovered that moving his feet as if walking did not aid him in the slightest, and simply focusing on moving and staying above water level was all he needed to do. The act was easier when he was in possession of Dein Nomos...

He _would_ hit the water before Duke grew close enough to catch, and the unconscious – bleeding – man sank. Without a second thought he released the formula and tilted into a dive. It wasn't his best dive, but he sank well enough. The salt water stung his eyes, but he kept them open to find the dark clad human. The weight of Dein Nomos and the young man's armor negated the buoyancy granted by the salt water and pulled him down toward the remains of buildings that remained underwater even as Zaude towered above its ring of rock.

A dark stream in the water trailed as a mark of his passing, staining the water from his side. A slight trail of bubbles marked his air leaving his stunned lungs, a thin trail indicated Duke's breath as he exhaled to keep his lungs from burning and he pushed down to catch a hold of Lowell. He ignored dark grey eyes that struggle to open as he pulled him closer, grabbing onto the hand that gripped Dein Nomos across the younger man's torso, and kicking for the surface. He didn't bother tapping into the imperial treasure for power, holding enough of his own to get him and the nearly as heavy male to the surface, even by mundane means of swimming. Lowell coughed slightly as their heads broke the surface, but did little else.

Then he discovered that he couldn't get out of the water to ... _float_ was an appropriate verb, back to shore. Training learned long ago came back to him neatly, and he shifted his grip and swam, the younger man's head on his shoulder and above water. This did have the effect of him breathing right under his ear, but at least both were above water level.

After reaching the rocky ring and carrying him out of water, Duke checked to see what exactly was bleeding. The nearly-black haired young man had a handful of scrapes and bruises – either wounds the Child of the Full Moon had not healed from the fight with the Commandant, or wounds from the crashing Apatheia, and one freely bleeding, deep cut on the left side of his stomach. If it had been on the right side, the younger man might have had a worse wound, but as it was...

"Trust humanity to stab one who tried to save them."

If he left Lowell here, the monsters would be drawn by his blood – and by the sounds it would be soon.

Human. They betrayed him. This one failed him.

But the other humans betrayed him as well.

The arrival of one of the crabs with the maws for claws decided him. He lifted the still unconscious swordsman and went back to Ilyccia.

Lowell and his friends had been willing to speak with Entelexeia, once they had realized that they were not simply monsters.

He would save the man.

* * *

It's a little jerky to read, but it's that way on purpose. Completely. I don't think Duke's head is a particularly safe place to be :X


	4. Path Altered

Fairly, very certain this is the last.

And it's even shorter! Wooooo.

* * *

The Adephagos was spreading across the world, its distortion shifting eerily against the night sky. Lowell's brief submission in ocean water had ended up infecting the wound. Cleaning puss from the slightly fevered man's wound was not how he expected to spend the week after rescuing the man from the fall.

But _Healing Circle _would not remove the infection, one did not simply heal over infections, and it could not lower a fever either.

Most of the lower quarter ignored him, he paid for the second room of the inn and moved Lowell there after the fact, ignoring any commotion of people visiting the young man's room next door and searching for him. Despite the fact he could obviously afford better, as he traveled to the middle quarter for supplies of bandages and food he was left completely alone, but for the one old man who watched him, puzzled.

When the fever broke and the infection cleared, he paused, hand on the bandaging.

_Should_ he heal him? The man would be weak from lying a bed for a week, but if whole he would be capable of following him.

Spending time waiting for a fever to either break or claim a life meant plenty of time spent staring out a window and thinking on solutions.

Should he heal him, only to take his life after he finalized his formula?

Should he leave him to be found, or possibly bleed himself dry if unfound?

_No._

He would not leave him to bleed, nor would he heal him whole.

"_Healing Circle_." After the stab wound had become a scabbed over cut, Duke used Dein Nomos to disperse the art, preventing the wound from completely closing. Lowell groaned in his sleep, and he took his hand from the bandages.

Should he allow him to know why all humanity would die?

_Lowell would never agree._

He would lead him to other answers, however. Duke once again lifted the swordsman, moving him into his own room at the inn and placed him on the bed. A green bound book went by his pillow, and after a moment, Dein Nomos went against the bed frame.

He would return to see what he thought of the books contents, after laying the trail for Lowell's companion, the canine.

The man was injured still, yes, but he would not die in the time it took him to walk to the middle quarter and back. Due to Duke's aid, he would not die. Yet.

_But every human would. Soon._

I:


	5. Path Stopped

Ok, I lied. This one should be the last one.

* * *

They were so set on living, on changing Terca Lumireis, that he didn't trust them not to knock him over the head when his back was turned, while he finished his formula anyway. A slight shift had it collapsing out of reach, and he turned.

"Come!" Blade in hand, Duke's feet left the floor as Yuri Lowell's sheath flicked away.

* * *

Was their conviction stronger than his? Was it because it was not one on one, but rather the whole of Brave Vesperia against one war hero, that Duke found himself unable to levitate any longer, Dein Nomos in hand, standing within a wary circle of men, young women, children and canine. He was sore, bruised, his clothes lightly singed and torn, but mostly unhurt, burning his magic in order to take less damage, using it to dull edges that came in contact with his body and lessen impacts. But near drained did not mean finished.

No, he could continue on.

"My friend, give me your strength!" His sight went golden and Tarqaron was left below.

* * *

Whatever Lowell was doing, he could not keep track of his movements. Here then, gone the next, over there a split second later, too fast for him to do more than start to defend himself, to begin the shift to bring a shield in the way before the blow connects to his magic and thumps into him with blunt pain. He was bleeding, from grazing arrows, from narrowly dodged spears, from blades that darted for his legs and past his shields and Dein Nomos, burned and chilled from spells he could not avoid.

He was still "on his feet", even doubled over from Lowell's attacks, and the burst of blue white in the corner of his vision – stopped. That light was from him. Weapons, light...

The light burned, yet it erased ache, and pain. Odd heat on his legs, on his arms, on his chest, on his back. But he could fight again.

"Join me now in battle, for the sake of this world!"

* * *

He floated back, reeling, felt his feet reach the seal floor, stumbled, and collapsed. Dein Nomos clattered to the ground and his shields vanished, the strength to his limbs vanishing, the odd heat replaced by fabric. He heard them, standing ready still, panting like he was, but still standing. They all could stand. Why were they that much stronger? Three times, out of three battles, and they could stand yet he couldn't.

The child, the brown haired and multicolored one, gasped as he grasped Dein Nomos and tried to push himself up. Only to collapse on his face again as everything _burned_. He was able to roll over, ignoring the pain of his wounds, the burns of spells and the cuts of blades and the puncture of arrows. It wouldn't matter, humans would not let an enemy live. The burning spread to his eyes and he blinked, slowly.

"I'm sorry... Elucifur..." Speaking hurt as well, but if he was to be slain – he did not put it past humans, even these humans, this Brave Vesperia, to slay an incapacitated foe – he wished to have this spoken. "I could not keep... my promise..." He heard the young man, the swordsman he had saved, pant for breath, then walk closer. He continued to stare at the Adephagos above, even as dark hair crossed the edge of his vision, and stayed there.

"I don't know what Elucifur was like, so this doesn't mean much coming from me." Lowell started. "But if Elucifur fought for humans during the Great War... then I don't think he'd want his friend to reject humanity."

"Elucifur's wish..." Duke's vision filled not with the sight of the Adephagos above, not with Lowell standing near his shoulder, but with memories kept back of his friend. "To protect the world..." He didn't want to look at him anymore. The human who looked like the Krityan Elucifur could become. "Peace for all living things..." He let his head fall to the other side – how could he have forgotten? Quick, child's footsteps.

"Yuri, hurry!" the child – Capel – insisted from near his head. Did they think the Adephagos would descend while they spoke? Or did they think he could still muster the strength to finish his formula?

What strength? It was all he could do to remain aware of what was going on.

"I'm on it!"

* * *

They left him alive. He didn't understand that. He would have killed them all to rid the world of the Adephagos, and they defeated him, rendered him incapable to move, but left him there as they went about their plan. He didn't understand.

And they were using their plan. Duke could read the formula, and it did as they said – turned every fragment of Apatheia in the world into power for defeating the Adephagos, converting them into these Spirits, the four first ones above their heads. He was slowly recovering, pushing himself to a kneel and sitting there until he could stand. Lowell was crying out, directing the forces they had gathered and aiming it and...

It wasn't quite enough. But.. Dein Nomos didn't really require Aer from him to gather power. Just a little more strength... they were changing, letting go of precious things to human to save the world. Changing it, yes, irreparably, but it wouldn't be destroyed, so that too was protecting it.

He got to his feet and activated Dein Nomos. Ignoring the stares of shock and confusion of those outside of the light of their plan as Duke was enveloped by another, swept up by it and moving far faster than he ever would on foot outside of battle.

* * *

Aaand that probably, should be it...


End file.
